Senior of the Year: Sophie Ma
By MEGHAN TATE ZEE ‘27
When asked about her experience applying to Phillips Exeter, Ma joked, “I think I found out about boarding school through a Business Insider article.”
Ma’s decision to apply to Exeter was inspired by her mother, who had enrolled at a local college in a foreign language and country so that her daughter could grow up in the United States. “My mother wanted to give me everything,” explained Ma, about their time living in Maryland. “She wanted to be present in my life and she wanted me to be able to pursue or do whatever I wanted to. She really sacrificed and was giving up a lot for me, especially during the years when I was training as a figure skater, which took up a lot of time.”
“It occurred to me that if I went to a private school where I could live, I would get my own student visa and would be able to stay in the U.S. by myself,” Ma said. “It would allow my mom to be able to go home and be with our family again.”
“I also just love the idea of getting to take such cool courses, living with my peers, and having access to all these opportunities and clubs and resources that I had never encountered before,” she added. “I had never had that before at any of my previous schools, so I wanted to experience things like that and really challenge myself.”
When she arrived at the Academy as a new lower, Ma was excited to start making friends and pursuing her academic and extracurricular interests. “When I came into Exeter, I just told myself, I’m going to do my best here, and I’m gonna see where it leads me,” she recalled. “I wanted to find my people and I wanted to really take full advantage of Exeter. And I think I’ve been able to do all of that, which is quite incredible.”
But in many ways, Ma’s journey at Exeter wasn’t what she had expected. In the classroom, she found herself leaning more towards the humanities and social sciences. “They were not necessarily the departments I was expecting to love coming in,” she said. “I was never a huge history girl before. I think it was just the way my public school taught history—it was just all memorizing facts. But Exeter’s History Department is absolutely fascinating to me. The second history class I ever took at Exeter was ‘The Race of Global History’ with Dr. Matsumaru, and it really got me more into the field. He was such an incredible instructor, and it was the way that he taught with such urgency and care for the subjects that we were learning about that humanized history for me and made it that much more important.”
Ma also mentioned her love for her English classes, saying, “I’m currently taking the class, ‘Spring in Love,’ with Ms. Carbonell, who is also my advisor and someone I greatly admire. The creativity practically bursts at the seams in those classes. It’s incredible and I love it a lot.”
Even outside of the classroom, Ma has a fondness for not only journalistic writing, but also creative pieces and poetry. Instructor in English Mercy Carbonell, Ma’s advisor and teacher, described her writing as having “a lyrical touch, an honest reckoning, a willingness to take a close hard look at herself and their life, and a tenderness with language that allows others to enter in.”
Carbonell described Ma as a student with “an intellectual who listens for the conversations across various texts, timelines, and sources and has a deep hunger for learning.”
During her three years at the Academy, Ma also discovered new and unexpected extracurricular interests. “I came to Exeter thinking that I was going to be a finance bro,” she recalled. “I joined the Exeter Investment Society (EIS) and I thought I was going to join all these business clubs, but then I found out that I enjoyed myself more in other spaces where I felt like I was building a sense of community.”
“I fell in love with all of these creative, artistic, community oriented spaces, like Asian Voices and Feminist Union,” Ma continued. “To this day, I’m very involved with OMA.”
As a student leader in the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA), Ma had the responsibility of being a source of support for POC students and campus, as well as organizing events and projects. She cited one of her most memorable experiences at the Academy as organizing the first moon festival last September—an event that combined celebrations for China and Vietnam’s Mid-Autumn Festival, Korea’s Chuseok, and Japan’s Tsukimi.
“It was incredibly cool,” Ma said. “It was always something I wanted to do after I came into Exeter and realized we didn’t have any means of celebrating Mid-Autumn here, which made me a bit sad. Thankfully, during my first year, a few seniors in my dorm organized a little impromptu get-together [for the holiday]. It was so sweet and I wanted the whole community to have that too. Seeing so many people show up to this event in my senior year was a really beautiful full-circle moment.”
Senior Aliyana Koch-Manzur, a close friend of Ma’s since her first year at the Academy, reflected, “I think that Sophie has become a real leader on campus, a leader that students feel comfortable talking to. Seeing her step into that role has been really interesting and fun to watch.”
In addition to being an OMA proctor, Ma’s leadership on campus has taken a variety of forms. “[I admire] her dedication to Asian Voices, a club she co-heads, with all the fun events like Boba Night or Spicy Ramen Night that she plans,” said Ma’s friend and senior Michael Yang. “She always knows how to lead a group of people and foster a stress-free and relaxed environment. She also has a fascinating passion for her role in Exeter’s MLK planning committee.”
Ma was also the Director of Writing on the Executive Board of The Exonian, with the role of not only helping to oversee the production of the paper, but training and introducing new students to the craft of writing and reporting. Within the club, Ma was devoted to making The Exonian more of an inclusive and diverse community.
Yang expanded on Ma’s presence in the club by stating, “I admire Sophie’s attention to detail and how persistent she is. Every Wednesday before publishing day, the three of us on the Executive Board would go lay out the paper in the newsroom, a process that took a minimum of five to six hours. Sophie was the best of us at catching mistakes like an improper byline or a cutoff article. Even if a mistake involved reshaping a whole page at 9 p.m., Sophie was determined to get it done. It would be hard to imagine my time at The Exonian without Sophie.”
“Sophie’s calm and organized approach immediately stood out to me,” Yang continued. “Her ability to navigate through challenges and prioritization helped our team get off the runway and into a rhythm and help build the foundation for our tenure in The Exonian.”
Even while discovering new hobbies, Ma kept in touch with her love for figure skating and music that began in her years before Exeter. Although she is no longer undergoing formal training to be a figure skater, Ma still makes time to spend at the rink: “Whenever I have time outside of school (although I’m hardly as good as I used to be), I still very much enjoy the feeling of being on the ice.” She also became a co-head of ESSO Figure Skating to help younger children learn how to skate.
Ma also loves music, and previously had experience receiving vocal training at the Peabody Institute of Music in Baltimore, playing piano and flute, and a “brief harmonica episode.” In the middle of her senior year, Ma started receiving guitar lessons at the Academy from Instructor in Music Eric Sinclair. “I do think that guitar is an instrument that I would love to stick with for a very long time and to hopefully get very good at,” she said. “I just love it so much. It’s so much fun, and I love that I can learn songs to sing along with.”
For example, Ma laughed and gave a shout out to “The Pothole Song,” which Sinclair had self-composed: “It’s an original song that he wrote about potholes, and it’s the most fantastic thing. It’s on YouTube and I highly recommend that people search up and watch it.”
In Bancroft Hall, the dorm that she has made her home since she arrived at the Academy three years ago, Ma is beloved for her kindness and care towards others. She contributes to her dorm community by being someone who people feel comfortable approaching and conversing with. Ma’s friend and upper Amélie Hespel recalled her memory of first arriving at Bancroft and being welcomed by Ma, who had already been living there for a year. “The first thing that stuck out to me was that she was willing to share everything. We kind of became friends by just studying together and eating ramen.”
Carbonell added, “I have witnessed Sophie laughing with others in the common room, celebrating with their peers, offering appreciation to dorm faculty; looking out for those in her own humble quiet ways.”
This kindness was mentioned by many of Ma’s close friends. She goes through enormous effort to do kind acts for her friends, from organizing gifts for their birthdays to providing them comfort and solace in times of need and spending countless hours debriefing with them about their chaotic lives.
“I tell her this a lot, but I think she’s one of the most caring people I’ve ever met,” added senior Anvi Bhate. “When you’re important to Sophie, you really feel it. She really cares for her friends like no one I’ve ever met.”
“Sophie called me one day and was like, ‘Hey, are you busy?’” recalled senior Avery Selig. “I was like, ‘No, why?’ and she told me, ‘Come downstairs, I have a gift for you.’ She had shown up to my dorm with flowers, just because she saw that my TikTok reposts were really sad. It was out of the blue, and really sweet.”
“She’s really a good person to vent to and to talk through problems; she’s just so supportive of her friends and is always hyping us up,” senior Aliyana Koch-Manzur said.
“I wouldn’t have gotten through Exeter without Sophie, and there have been so many points where I’ve been at my lowest and she’s helped me get through it,” said Bhate. “I wouldn’t trade that for anything, because I don’t think I would be who I am right now without her. Exeter’s a hard place, and I feel like you need people that get you and help push you and motivate you, but also support you through your highs and your lows.”
Sometimes, these catch-up sessions with Ma are paired with tasty food. “Almost once a week we’ll do this thing where we go to Sue’s Korean Kitchen. We’ll get food, and then we’ll just talk for an hour and catch up on everything,” Bhate explained.
Another of Ma’s friend’s, senior Lucy Lukens, described Ma as “the group orchestrator,” and “the first person to reach out and be like, ‘We’re having dinner this weekend.’”
When asked to describe her, Ma’s friends used the words exceptional, devoted, and elegant. On a less serious note, some added sleepy, a little blind, and directionally-clueless (in a cute way, of course).
“No matter what mood she’s in, she will always put on a smile and do her best to make you feel better regardless of what she has going on,” Hespel said.
Selig admired Ma’s “hard work, determination, and love for everybody around her…I know she’s always up really late. But she always made herself look perfect every day, no matter what- even on top of getting no sleep and working so hard in every single class. And then she still has time to get lunch with people, get gifts for people, and plan birthdays, and more! She just balances everything so beautifully, and it’s very admirable.”
Ma’s friends, family, and teachers are proud to have seen her grow over her three years at the Academy into the passionate, accomplished, thoughtful, and talented person she is today. “I feel like she’s really grown into herself and she knows who she is,” said Bhate. “That lets her be more confident and she seems more sure of herself. I feel like she’s always been caring, but now she’s been a lot more intentional about showing it. We’ve all kind of grown up together, and [Sophie] was always this person, but now she has this incredible sense of self and she’s holding herself so much stronger.”
Now, as Ma graduates from the Academy, her curiosity, determination, and desire for justice are sure to take her to extraordinary places. “When I think about what I want to do in the future, I want something that’s intellectually stimulating and socially impactful,” Ma said, “so journalism is definitely in the mix. I’m also considering law and other things, but who knows, right? Something I’ve realized at Exeter is that there are so many possibilities and we are so capable of change that anything could really happen.”
“Dear Sophie”
a collection of messages from your Exonian family
“I wouldn’t have made it through Exeter without you.”
- Amélie Hespel ‘25
“Thank you so, so much for being such a good friend and for always making me feel so loved- oh, it’s also her birthday today!”
- Aliyana Koch-Manzur ‘24
“I am very grateful that I’ve met you and I’m so happy to have you in my life and hopefully for the rest of my life. ‘Cause who told me this—“High school’s where you find your bridesmaids, not your husband”? I think that is the best advice I’ve ever taken, because I do want to know you for the rest of my life.”
- Avery Selig ‘24
“Sophie, you are really good at celebrating people when they’re at their highs, even if you’re not feeling your best; but also being there for people when they’re at their lows… I hope we stay friends for the rest of our lives, and I hope at some point we get to rent an apartment in New York, like we always talk about.”
- Anvi Bhate ‘24
“Perhaps Arundhati Roy offers beautifully in ‘The Cost of Living’ what I wish for you: ‘To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.’”
- Ms. Carbonell
“You are truly an inspiration to anyone you meet. It’s a gift to call you a friend and to be able to witness you pursue her passions, celebrate your achievements, and share moments of joy. You are a beautiful soul with immense care and appreciation for the world around you. I can’t wait to see what your future holds.”
- Sonia Soloviova ‘24
